How to Take Control of Skills & Endorsements on Your LinkedIn Profile

Would you like to take better control of the skills you have listed on your Linked profile? Today’s article will show you how and answer some of the common questions I am asked about this, sometimes contentious, LinkedIn feature. LinkedIn provides the option for your connections to endorse you for skills you may or may not have listed on your LinkedIn profile. You can turn this feature off and should take control of those skills that are listed on your LinkedIn profile.

LinkedIn will advise you that including specific skills on your LinkedIn profile is a great way to showcase your abilities to other members, such as your peers, colleagues, managers and even recruiters. While this is true, it has also been a way for sales people to get your attention and can sometimes be part of a sequence that social sellers use to try to get you into their sales pipeline. For this reason, this feature is contentious, because people who do not know you may in fact endorse you, and people can see who’s endorsed you for the skills you have listed on your profile.

LinkedIn Profile Skills – The Basics

You can add a maximum of 50 skills to your LinkedIn profile and once you’ve added a skill, these can be validated by 1st-degree connections to reinforce their weighting. These are called skill endorsements, which are different than recommendations. When a connection endorses your skills, it acts as social proof (someone other than you saying you’ve demonstrated these skills) and can contribute to the strength of your profile, and increases the likelihood that you’ll be discovered for opportunities related to the skills you possess.

Depending on your settings, you don’t need to request a skill endorsement in order to receive one. By default, when a connection endorses one of your skills you’ll receive a notification. You can visit your Settings and Privacy to turn this notification off.

How to Add Skills to Your LinkedIn Profile

If you don’t have any skills listed on your profile, the Skills & Endorsements section won’t appear. To add this section and a skill:

Click the Me icon at the top of your LinkedIn homepage

Click View profile

Click Add new profile section on the right blue rail

Select Skills from the dropdown.

Type the name of a skill in the Skill text box and select it from the dropdown list that appears. Once selected, it will automatically be added to your list of skills.

Once the Skills & Endorsements section has been added to your profile, you can include more skills at any time. To add more skills:

Click the Me icon at the top of your LinkedIn homepage

Click View profile

Scroll to the Skills & Endorsements section and click Add a new skill

In the pop-up window, type the name of a skill in the text box and select it from the dropdown list that appears. If your skill doesn’t appear, type the full skill name in the field provided, then click it to add

Click Add

How to Remove Skills from Your LinkedIn Profile

To remove skills from your LinkedIn Profile:

Click the Me icon at the top of your LinkedIn homepage

Click View profile

Scroll to the Skills & Endorsements section and click the Edit icon

In the pop-up window, scroll to the skill you’d like to delete and click the X next to it

Click Save

Display Order of Skill Endorsements

Adding specific skills to your LinkedIn profile allows you to showcase your abilities to other members, along with managers and recruiters.

If you don’t have any skills listed on your profile, the Skills & Endorsements section won’t appear.

Your skills are categorised by areas of expertise:

Top Skills

Industry Knowledge

Tools & Technologies

Interpersonal Skills

Languages

Other Skills

Please note: You must have more than 3 skills listed in your Skills & Endorsements section for your skills to be categorised.

Reordering your skills on your profile

Once you add skills, you can reorder them on your profile at any time.To reorder your skills:

Click the Me icon at top of your LinkedIn homepage.

Click View profile.

Scroll down to the Skills & Endorsements section and click the Edit icon.

In the pop-up window, click and drag the Reorder icon (it looks like 4 stacked lines) to the right of the corresponding skill you’d like to reorder.

Click Save.

You can choose up to 3 skills to feature in the Top Skills category.

Choosing your top skills for your LinkedIn Profile

To choose your top skills for your LinkedIn profile:

Click the Me icon at top of your LinkedIn homepage

Click View profile

Scroll down to the Skills & Endorsements section and click the Edit icon

Click the Pin icon to the left of the skill you’d like to add or remove from the Top Skills category

Click Save

LinkedIn Skills & Endorsements Preferences

I am often endorsed for a variety of skills by people who do not know me. In my case I think this is because I write regularly and have a lot of readers. In this way, endorsements can be an asset as it is those people who perhaps value my insights that want to acknowledge particular skills. If you would prefer your connections not to endorse you, here’s some examples of the settings you can turn off or on.

You can adjust the settings on your profile to manage how you receive and give skill endorsements.

To manage your skill endorsement settings:

Click the Me icon at top of your LinkedIn homepage

Click View profile

Scroll down to the Skills & Endorsements section and click the Edit icon

I hope this article has helped you take better control of your LinkedIn Profile skills and endorsements.

Thank you for reading Think Bespoke’s insights. As one of Australia’s leading independent LinkedIn specialists and a Content Marketer who understands the value and importance of sharing your story, I enjoy helping individuals and organisations maximise their time online with LinkedIn. Find out more about Think Bespoke’s LinkedIn Services. You can sign up to my newsletter herewhere you will receive a complimentary download of Think Bespoke’s LinkedIn Profile Checklist to help you update your LinkedIn Profile.

Hi Carol, Thank you for your question. To remove their endorsement you’d need to remove the skill. You used to be able to remove a specific person from endorsing you without removing them as a connection. You now really need to remove them as a connection to remove the endorsement. Not ideal. Thanks, Karen